HYDERABAD: The ambitious two-day programme organised by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, to give its parent, the Bharatiya Janata Party a quick-start in the upcoming Assembly polls, largely failed to create ripples as expected. With a no-so-happening second-day agenda, an ambitious line-up of crowd pullers, including various Chief Ministers and Union Ministers failed to make a mark on the populace.
The stage was all set for BJP to unleash a scathing attack on the ruling TRS. Instead, only two Chief Ministers -- Biplab Deb and Devendra Fadnavis -- managed to dole out a sharp critique. It was promised that ten top ministers would come to the event, including Yogi Aditya Nath, Sarbananda Sonowal and Nirmala Sitaraman. But, many of them did not turn up.
Even participation by the State BJP members was nominal and their presence was restricted to Amit Shah’s meeting. Though a crowd of 1 lakh people was expected, the number that turned out was around a mere 50,000. Ironically, though BJYM is headed by a woman, Poonam Mahajan, gender disparity was visible among the crowd. Not more 20 per cent of the audience were women, said to a BJYM coordinator.
Longjam Manibala, the only BJYM woman of the 181 members contingent of Manipur, said “travelling long distance could have been a common problem.” But for her, the two-day travel was mostly to see the city of pearls. Arpita Badajena, State secretary of Odisha argues that the less number of women in the audience should not be equated to fewer women members.
“We will take the word from here to the people in our State,” she said. On a lighter note, members of the Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat who were in large numbers made sure that their presence is felt each time a speaker came to the dais. On some occasions, a verbal dual also took place between them with chairs being threatened to be thrown at each other.